


Out of Darkness

by Asidian



Series: A Very Long Game [2]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Rescue, Starvation, Survival, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asidian/pseuds/Asidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things end. So too, eventually, did the snow.</p><p>It stopped falling after an eternity of frigid wind and muffled white, and three pairs of eyes lifted toward the sky that night, expectant and watchful.</p><p>The next day, leaves began to reappear on the birch trees. Wes plucked one with bare fingers – he'd long since relinquished his gloves to Wendy – and brought it before Madame Wickerbottom.</p><p>"It took them long enough," she said, inspecting it with pursed lips. "Well, off we go, then. All of us."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what I'm doing with this. I just have a couple of ideas floating around in my head and wanted to get them down.
> 
> This and the others, if I end up writing them, are definitely in the same continuity as Looks Like You're Having Some Trouble, though it's not at all necessary to read that to figure out what's going on.

"The hounds are baying," said Wendy, her wide, pale eyes focused away from the fire, toward the gathering gloom.

"Yes, dear," Mrs. Wickerbottom told her. "I hear them, too. Now, remember what we said about camouflage."

The girl's fingers found the rope, nimbly tied the bulky headgear over her fair hair. "Do you think it will serve?"

"You're the very picture of _Ardisia crenata_ ," Mrs. Wickerbottom said, but glanced her over one final time to be sure. Thick leaves, a glossy dark green, shielded most of the girl's face from view. With the makeshift headgear in place, crouched among the greenery, she would scarcely be seen. "Don't forget to take the sleep darts with you."

"Yes, ma'am," said Wendy, and she took hold of the hollow reeds with their precious contents.

Mrs. Wickerbottom gathered up the spear, herself. She threw another log onto the fire, and then a second, filling the thick wooden walls of their camp with a warm yellow glow. Then she took up her place just inside the narrow entryway, tense and watchful.

"Ma'am?" said Wendy's voice from where she crouched among the shrubs. "If death reaches out his hand for you tonight –"

"He'll go home disappointed," Mrs. Wickerbottom told her, firmly. "Now, hush. They're almost here."

Silence fell inside the little camp. The only sounds that reached their ears were the crackle of the fire and the distant howls of the hounds. Sunset dwindled into true dark, and Mrs. Wickerbottom's fingers began to ache from the grip she had on the haft of the spear.

At last, Wendy's voice came again: "Perhaps they've slain some other creature, instead."

It was what she had been thinking, herself. Usually, once they were in earshot, the beasts arrived in short fashion – guided by smell, doubtless, with the advantage of superior olfactory systems. But the moon was already rising, a round white cheese that hung low in the sky, and still not a pawed foot had stepped in their camp.

She shook her head, placed one narrow finger over her lips, as though hushing a student too loud in her library. Mrs. Wickerbottom crept toward the fire, where the flame was growing low, and added another log. Then she returned to her post.

From the darkness, she could still hear the yowling, strange and otherwordly. The sound drew tendrils of ice up her spine, and her palms on the spear were slick with sweat. What could be taking them? Had they stumbled upon sleeping beefalo, and attempted to hunt larger game?

Perhaps, for out there in the darkness she could hear snarls. But the great shaggy giants of the plains usually gave as good as they got, and there had been not one single canine yelp of pain.

Then they were close enough for her to make out footfalls, and she shelved the thoughts for later deliberation, paying attention instead to the pattering of feet against dark earth. Unexpectedly, an impact sounded – solid, as though with the wall – and then a low tearing noise.

There was no time to wonder what the sound could have been, for the footfalls kept coming – were at the narrow entryway that led into the camp, now. She hefted the spear, and from the corner of her eye, she could see the shift of foliage that indicated Wendy was ready to do her part.

Then the first figure staggered through the opening, and it was not a hound at all. It was a young man, hunched and stumbling, one arm pressed against his side where the black and red striped fabric of his shirt dripped with blood.

The hound was just behind him, slavering jaws snapping at his heels – and Mrs. Wickerbottom thrust the spear out sideways as it passed, felt the blade slice cleanly through muscle.

A second of the creatures followed, and the dart sailed through the air with flawless aim, landing with no sound at all among thick, dark fur. The hound pawed at the ground, raking up fresh dirt – thrashed its head, as though it could shake off the effects – and then it toppled sideways, its bulk tripping the third.

The first hound into camp forgot its pursuit and turned on Mrs. Wickerbottom now, intent on the spear that had wounded it. She brought the haft of the weapon up in time to intercept powerful jaws, sidestepped a mouthful of teeth. A flash of motion caught the corner of her eye and the third hound was down, its massive sides working like a bellows.

She lifted the spear again – came too close to the flashing teeth and fell back a step, alarmed by the miscalculation – and then the third dart found its target, and the last of them went still and silent.

Panting, Mrs. Wickerbottom finished the job: a spear to the carotid artery, fast and efficient, before they could wake.

In the silence that followed, she wiped a shaking hand across her brow, thinking not for the first time that she was entirely too old for this.

It was only then, when the adrenaline coursing through her system had nowhere to go and her ears told her that the world outside their walls held no more monsters for this evening, that she remembered their unexpected visitor.

He was hunched against the far wall, one thin arm outstretched to use the structure for support. The other clutched at his own torso, where blood dripped from between his fingers. His face was ghastly white, with smudges of black: the last remnants of face paint gone terribly awry.

From the bushes, Wendy rose, a small pale figure in the light of the fire. Her eyes were fixed on the new arrival, distantly fascinated.

"Death _does_ walk here tonight," she said.

"He does not," Mrs. Wickerbottom corrected, "and he will not. Wendy, don't dawdle. Fetch the salve."

And with that, she turned toward the man in the corner.

"Show me," she demanded, but he shook his head, pulled away from her hand when she reached out.

"Don't be childish," said Mrs Wickerbottom, sternly. It was the kind of voice that had once made doctoral candidates shuffle their feet like reprimanded schoolboys. "I can stop the bleeding. Now, show me."

The tone of command served her well. The man – scarcely more than a boy, really – took his hand away reluctantly.

The wound was deep, and bleeding freely. She could see where the hound had sunk its teeth in and begun to pull; the edges were red and raw, still fresh. The arm itself was covered in half-healed burns; she could see them well enough, for the flames had licked away the fabric of his shirt there, leaving singed dark edges behind.

It was a small miracle of anatomy that he was still on his feet. He seemed ready to tip sideways at any second.

"Sit down," she advised him, and it was as though granting permission had cut the strings of a puppet. He sank slowly down until he was sitting back against the wall, eyes glazed and distant, half gone with pain and shock.

"Ma'am?" said Wendy, from where she'd appeared at Mrs. Wickerbottom's elbow.

"Thank you, dear," she said absently, and reached to take the leaf wrap that held the salve. To the bleeding man, she said: "Pull up your shirt."

He fumbled with the task, thin fingers awkward as he complied, and unveiled a mine field of bloody tooth marks.

"This will hurt," she warned him, and pressed the concoction to the wound.

The man's good hand made a fist in the fabric of his shirt where he held it, and he bit his lip and hissed in a breath, but he did not make a sound.

"Another," said Mrs. Wickerbottom, and Wendy pressed a second leaf into her hand. Deft fingers found the places where the puncture wounds were deepest and worked the healing salve in. The man's face crinkled in agony; the knuckles on his good hand were white with the strength of his grip.

She ignored him for the time being. Over the top of the newly-applied salve, she wrapped a makeshift bandage of spider silk, circled it twice around him, and tied it off neatly.

It wasn't until she finished that he relaxed, leaning hard against the wall and gulping air. He was trembling now, from pain or fear, or – more likely – both.

His gaze, dim and unfocused, was pointed somewhere over her shoulder, as though half expecting another hound to come charging in from the darkness beyond the walls. He flinched at nothing – drew back into himself – lowered his face into his hands and began to weep.

"Will he die?" asked Wendy, her strange, pale eyes fixed on the huddled form.

"Not tonight," said Mrs. Wickerbottom, firmly, and she went to fetch the bedroll.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's read and left a comment or kudos!
> 
> I don't even know what I'm doing with my life. Filling it up with Don't Starve fic, apparently. It's a sickness.

In the morning, the sun returned to banish the terrors of the night, and the young man slept still.

By the light of day, he looked like a thing dead: too-pale skin, face paint a mask half beset with blood and filth, shirt torn to something near useless. Mrs. Wickerbottom hmm'd disapprovingly. She dipped a scrap of spider silk in water and used it to wipe away the blood. Then she fetched a clean one and did what she could about the face paint.

Wendy left to check the spider traps, and she returned near midday, offering small, glistening chunks of gland as trophies. Mrs. Wickerbottom squeezed them out onto the man's burns, then onto the smaller injuries littering his torso. Still he slept, senseless to the world, and Wendy went out again to gather berries.

It was late afternoon by the time he began to stir – a slight shifting, a careful parting of lips. His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the plush white fur of the bedroll, then brushed back and forth, as though uncertain what they were feeling.

Blearily, he opened his eyes.

"Finally," said Mrs. Wickerbottom. "You were out longer than I'd expected. How are you feeling?"

He seemed to think about this for a moment. His fingers quested downward, touched the place where the salve and bandages had done so much to keep his insides on the inside. His eyes widened, just a little.

"I would not have suspected that the secretions of arachnids had medicinal properties, either," she told him. "I take it you're better? Somewhat, at least."

The man nodded carefully, hesitant. Paused – pressed his lips together – shook his head.

Shaking fingers twisted a twig from one of the saplings planted in the camp, and the man lowered it to the ground, scratching at the dirt. It took her a moment to realize that he was writing something there, and Mrs. Wickerbottom tilted her head to see what he'd spelled out.

"Food?" it said, and the man stopped, biting at his lip. "Please," he added.

Beneath the "please," he drew a line, and then another. When he glanced up to see her reaction to the words, there was a certain wariness to him.

"The soup will be done any minute now," she said.

It was as though she'd promised him a  doorway out of this world. The grin that split the young man's face was bright and sudden, full of gratitude. He seized her hand and kissed the back of it, and Mrs. Wickerbottom snorted, unladylike, and took it away.

"Don't get your hopes up too high," she warned him. "It's a new recipe."

He sat back, somewhat abashed, but all the same his eyes were roving the camp – sweeping over the even row of drying racks and the farms with careful white fences. When he reached the crockpot, full and bubbling, his gaze skittered to a stop, distinctly entranced.

To keep him distracted, Mrs. Wickerbottom held out a hand. "Eleanor Wickerbottom," she said – and the young man broke off staring for long enough to shake it.

When she'd let go, he retrieved his twig. "Wes," he wrote, in the dirt next to his earlier words, and she looked at him, appraising.

He glanced up from his name – offered a smile that was almost apologetic. He put the flat of his hand over his throat and shook his head.

"I thought as much," she said. And by the easy familiarity with that explanation, she guessed it wasn't recent.

His attention had begun to wander already, though. He was watching the soup again, and so much for distractions.

Mrs. Wickerbottom counted back the time in her head, judging as best she could by the relative position of the sun. She liked to be sure the meat was cooked enough – had gotten quite ill indeed when she first arrived, by being hasty. But Wes was entirely too thin, all sharp lines and hard angles, and she didn't like the way he couldn't seem to pull his eyes from the crockpot. He was half-starved; that much was plain.

"Well," she said. "I suppose a little early won't hurt anyone."

Again came that grin, sudden as a break in the clouds after a spring storm, and Mrs. Wickerbottom made her way to the crockpot to check the contents.

It was a new recipe; that much was true, even if she didn't think they had to worry about it being a failure. The soup had thickened nicely, rabbit and mushroom, with a pinch of sea salt they'd scraped from the cliffs overlooking this world's strange, wild ocean. The smell when she lifted the lid was rich and savory, and she scooped some from the pot into a rough-hewn wooden bowl.

"Don't eat too fast," she warned him, as she set the meal in his hands. "You'll be ill."

His fingers closed on the bowl; he nodded, once, the gesture unsteady. Then he ignored her advice completely.

Wes ate like he'd never seen food before – tipped the bowl back and drank, throat working as he swallowed.

It was a small miracle he didn't choke himself, but when the broth was gone, he had the presence of mind to lower the bowl and fish the pieces left at the bottom out with his fingers, so that they didn't go down whole. That was something, at least.

"Better now?" she asked.

He smiled, dazed and euphoric, and gave her a nod. But his arm was snaking around his stomach already, and she thought he might be having regrets about not pacing himself.

Briefly, she considered lecturing him on the body's physical reaction to starvation and the reintroduction of nutrients after a prolonged period without. But it was too late now; and anyway, she suspected that common sense would have fought a brief war with willpower and lost somewhat spectacularly. So Mrs. Wickerbottom only sighed and said, "If you're going to throw up, please do it in the corner."

He didn't. He bit his lip and closed his eyes for a little while – seemed to be struggling. But everything stayed down, and when ten minutes had gone, he looked much better. There was even some color in his cheeks now.

Mrs. Wickerbottom's fingers carried on with their work while he recovered, wove dried strands of grass together as though she'd been doing it for years. It wasn't terribly different from knitting, once you had the rhythm down. In, out – watch the placement – pull.

She glanced up, only mildly surprised, when he came to join her, sat himself down cross-legged on the dirt, and helped himself to a few handfuls of grass. His eyes were on her hands, just watching; then he laid the first strand flat and began to weave, a clumsy mirror image of her own method.

The minutes stretched away, and he grew steadier at the work; he had quick hands, and he picked up the rhythm with surprising ease. In, out – watch the placement – pull. He was a fast study.

She'd meant the pile to take her until full dark, but it was only sundown by the time they set the last trap aside. They'd gone through the entire store of grass.

"Thank you," she told him. "That was kind."

Again that abashed expression, and he tapped a finger lightly on top of the bandages at his torso. Then he began to weave – in, out, pull – with nothing but air. He broke off abruptly, turned both hands out, held up the imaginary basket like an offering.

She might have taken it the wrong way, if not for his expression. But his face was remarkably easy to read, and written there now was a painful sort of earnestness, the same gratitude that had been there when she gave him the soup.

Mrs. Wickerbottom breathed a sigh. She set the traps to one side, stood, and brushed her skirt off. "You don't owe me anything, dear," she said.

He started to shake his head, but she cut him off. "I know what you meant. I just mean to say that this is the sort of place where you have to look out for one another. You don't have to thank me for it."

Wes stared at her for a long moment, looking for an instant as though he were about to cry again. Then he blinked twice, hard, and nodded. She ignored the suspicious way his eyes had grown wet at the corners.

"Now," Mrs. Wickerbottom said, as she glanced up to check the dwindling light in the sky. "Wendy ought to be home any minute. Are you feeling up to some tea?"

She heated _Ardisia crenata_ jam on a flat rock beside the fire, spooned honey into three rough bowls while it warmed. Wes scrubbed out his soup bowl from earlier, then turned to pack away the bedroll – drew up short when he saw the stains his blood had left.

He flustered a moment, distraught, until she said: "Ice will get out the worst of it. It's in the ice chest." And he nodded, rallied, and did as good a job cleaning as could be expected.

He was hanging it out to dry on the low segment of the wooden wall, still fussing over the spots left behind, when she brought the tea.

"It's white fur," she advised him. "Don't worry too much. Not all of those are new."

He nodded reluctantly, turned aside to accept the bowl and inspected the contents with some interest.

" _Ardisia crenata_ jam, honey, and water," she informed him. "Not strictly a tea in that it's not of the species _Camellia sinensis_ , or even in the family Theaceae." He was looking at her with something she couldn't place, something frank and a little surprised. Mrs. Wickerbottom cleared her throat. "We call it tea because Wendy says it reminds her of afternoons with tea and biscuits. See if you like it."

Wes nodded – raised it to his lips to take a sip.

If the reaction was anything to go by, he liked it. The tea was gone in ten seconds, and then Wes was busy scraping the last of the jam from the bottom with his fingers.

Mrs. Wickerbottom frowned, reminded again of the word "please" with two lines underneath it.

She set a hand on the boy's shoulder – noted with some disapproval that he startled at the contact. "There's more if you want it," she said, and of course he did. So she turned to fix more tea.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a format change, this time. Hope no one minds, and thanks again so much to everyone who's stuck with me so far and taken the time to leave kudos or comments. :)

Mrs. Wickerbottom never asked if Wes wanted to stay.

Instead, the following morning, she handed him one of the traps they'd made the day before. "Winter will be here soon enough," she told him. "We'd best make sure you have something warmer to wear."

And he nodded, and fixed her with that smile again, so bright and grateful that it hurt a little to look at.

===

They fell into a routine: breakfast together, then out into the world to divide and conquer, bringing home whatever materials Mrs. Wickerbottom declared were necessary for survival.

Every morning, before they left, Wes smoothed his face paint on by touch.

Mrs. Wickerbottom noted with some incredulity that it always went on even, the rouge on his cheeks symmetrical. It was something of a triumph, given that he had no mirror.

Wendy was fascinated by the ritual of it – sat beside him to watch, pale eyes round and staring. "Why are you painting your face?" she asked one day, perhaps a week after he'd arrived, with a child's straightforward curiosity.

He seemed to think about it for a little bit – paused after a moment and gave her a smile. He reached out a hand to touch the garland resting atop her wavy blonde hair. It was a lovely thing, brimming with _Lilium bulbiferum_ and their vibrant orange petals _._

He lifted his eyebrows – more expressive, now that every line was picked out in white – and waited for her to find the answer.

"It's something flippant, to make you feel better," Wendy guessed at last. "Like the garland?"

Like pausing in the scramble of daily life to pick flowers and weave them into a crown: a small slice of mundanity, in a world where very little was mundane. Mrs. Wickerbottom closed her eyes, and wished that Wendy had not asked.

But Wes only nodded, and daubed his lips with black. Like all the rest, the mark went on perfectly even.

===

On the day that Wes met Abigail, Wendy returned from gathering with the entire front of her dress drenched.

"Abigail wanted to play with the frogs today," she said, and when Mrs. Wickerbottom glanced up, she found a dozen of said frogs cradled in the girl's skirt, like a makeshift sack. They glistened, still faintly damp, littered with the gashes that had killed them.

Then Abigail drifted in behind her, a small dead girl glowing softly in the gathering twilight, and Mrs. Wickerbottom had never seen anyone move as fast as Wes did then. He went from cross-legged on the ground, where he was patiently smoothing out the edges on a thermal stone, to halfway across the camp in approximately five seconds.

He pointed a shaking finger, panting as though he'd just finished a race.

"That's Wendy's sister, dear," Mrs. Wickerbottom told him. "But she can only stay sometimes, and only for a little while."

He pointed the finger again, more urgently this time.

"Yes," Wendy said, serenely. "She's dead."

===

In the middle of night, while the other two slept, Mrs. Wickerbottom tended the fire. She'd always been something of an insomniac, and as she aged, it had only gotten worse.

Here, she found that it was to her advantage.

She wove traps and baskets; she strung fishing poles; she listened for the hounds. And, as she always had before coming to this world, she wrote. The paper was papyrus now, sloppy pressed reeds, and the pens were sticks of charcoal, but she filled her nights with words all the same. When the dawn came, she would tuck them away into a chest.

It was habit – her private indulgence. It was not something she would have thought to share.

But one morning, in the hours before sun-up, Wes jerked awake, eyes wide, mouth open in a silent scream. He sat unsteadily, hair damp with sweat, and put one arm out to the side of himself, as far as it would go. He stretched the other in the opposite direction, as though feeling for something she could not see – but when he didn't find it, the tension went out of him, and he heaved a shaking breath.

It was only then that he seemed to notice she was awake, hunched over her manuscript.

He offered up a pallid smile, a small wave. Then he nodded toward her – held one hand out flat, like a tablet, and used the other to hold an imaginary pen.

"A bit of nonsense," she told him, and went to stuff the pages away again.

But he waved one hand, palm out, to the side. It was a gesture that she knew by now: _don't_.

"What," said Mrs. Wickerbottom, "I ought to keep going?"

This time the extended hand was palm up, and he pointed at himself with a hopeful little smile.

She regarded him for a long time. Finally, she said: "It's frightfully boring. Don't say I didn't warn you."

Over the next few nights, he read the whole manuscript, all fifty-seven pages of it so far. Mrs. Wickerbottom wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that.

===

"Now," said Mrs. Wickerbottom, ducking under a low tree branch. "Be careful up ahead. We'll have to skirt around them, but that should be safe enough, as long as we don't wake them up."

"Yes, ma'am," said Wendy.

"Keep Abigail close to you, too," Mrs. Wickerbottom told her. "Let's not have any repeats of that incident in the swamp, young lady."

Wendy glanced up at her sister, expression unreadable. "Please behave, Abigail."

Wes reached out to tap Mrs. Wickerbottom on the shoulder. He drew a massive X in mid-air, then walked his fingers far, far around it. Then he formed the X again and fixed her with an inquiring look.

"Machines of some sort," she told him. "They're quite nasty, when they're up and moving around. But as long as we're able to –"

He wasn't listening anymore.

He was staring through the branches of the trees, to where the machines were visible. There was a hum of gears in the air, and a faint whir of mechanics. Where the metallic creatures were gathered, the ground was a peculiar shade of purple – mottled, polished stone. In the center of them, the chiseled lines of it standing upon a pedestal, was a statue of the man who had brought them here, his face split with a self-satisfied grin.

Wes had gone stock-still, face frozen with terror.

He shook his head, and he staggered backward a step – then another. His foot caught a root, twisted under him, and he went down, but still he scrambled away, on hands and feet, shaking his head the whole while.

"As long as we don't wake them, it's quite safe," Mrs. Wickerbottom repeated, but he seemed not to hear.

She'd never seen him like this – not that night with the hounds, not when a dead girl had come into their camp.

He lurched back to his feet, seemed to pull himself together. Took Mrs. Wickerbottom's arm in one hand and Wendy's in the other and pulled them away from the machinery and the strange, purple ground. He pulled them past the edge of the forest, to the place where the conifers gave way to open plain. When he finally came to a stop, he rounded on them, near tears.

He pointed one vehement finger back the way they'd come, and he made the X again. Not just with fingers this time, with both arms. He could not have made himself plainer if he'd been able to speak the words aloud: "Don't go there."

Wendy watched him impassively, small face thoughtful. "They're dangerous even when they're sleeping?" she asked.

And Wes nodded: yes, yes, _yes_.

===

It rained long and hard, a chill and bitter rain, and the frogs had their revenge.

Wendy returned to camp that evening soaked and bedraggled, without her sister in tow.

"They sent Abigail away again," she told Mrs. Wickerbottom, cradling a water-logged camellia carefully in her palms. It was white now, all the color leeched away.

Mrs. Wickerbottom pushed some of the damp strands of blonde hair behind her ears and handed her an umbrella. "You can call her again in a few days, dear. Now stand by the fire, before you catch your death."

"We all will, eventually," Wendy said, but she went to stand beside the fire all the same, and a few moments later she took the tea that Mrs. Wickerbottom pushed into her hand.

The rain fell and fell, and thunder shook the sky. Lightning set fire to the forest west of their camp, and they watched most of their wood supply burn to the ground.

In the evening, when the sun went down and the rain showed no signs of lessening, Wendy began to cry, a silent stream of tears that dripped down her pale face to mingle with the rest of the water.

Mrs. Wickerbottom made her more tea, and Wes dug into his pocket for something – a balloon, it turned out, long and red. He blew it up, turned it one way and then the other, and then he began to work. His fingers moved, quick and clever, twisting and pulling and tightening. When he was done, he held a camellia, bright red and in full bloom.

He handed it over to Wendy – tapped Abigail's real flower, which was beginning to flush pink already.

She looked from the fake camellia to the real one, and she took the balloon flower with a wan smile. "Yes," she said. "I suppose it won't be much longer now." She wiped at her face with the back of one hand, and her smile warmed a little around the edges. "I'm being silly, aren't I?"

===

The rain turned to snow, and they did not venture out without earmuffs and heated stones any longer.

The wind blew cruel and harsh; food became scarce. Mrs. Wickerbottom took to padding their meals with whatever scraps were on hand, to make them stretch a little further. God help them all, some days they were shredding twigs to make meatballs more filling.

The longer the winter drew on, the more they subsisted on jerky, and what little weight they'd gained in the relative plenty of fall began to melt away. They ate ice; they put jam on snow and pretended it was a meal. Mrs. Wickerbottom and Wes slipped Wendy extra when it came time to divvy up dinner, careful that she did not notice.

Frostbite loomed as an ugly possibility, and Mrs. Wickerbottom lectured them on the signs, and prevention, and staying close enough to camp that they could return if they began to lose feeling in their extremities. She told them what to do if they noticed the symptoms: heat water in the crockpot, not too hot, and submerge the affected area, then keep it warm.

They spent long hours around the fire, all three of them, and the nights seemed to drag on for days.

At true dark, they pushed the fur rolls together, and Wes and Wendy bundled up beneath a makeshift blanket of rabbit skin, still wearing earmuffs. Mrs. Wickerbottom sat beside them, legs stretched out against the fur, and they piled three glowing thermal stones among them.

While they slept, Mrs. Wickerbottom tended the fire – kept it high and bright and hot.

And for some few hours every night, cosseted away from the chill dark in the comfortable yellow circle of light, they were warm.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again so much to everyone who's stuck with me, and to those of you who took the time to leave kudos or comments especially. I really appreciate it. :)
> 
> This is in indeed the last chapter of Out of Darkness. It's a little bit of an odd breaking point, but I knew I wanted to leave it like this fairly early on. I'm definitely not done with the series, though. Next up are a couple of one-shots to fill in the timeline a bit. We'll come back to this trio in a bit. o/

All things end.

So too, eventually, did the snow.

It stopped falling after an eternity of frigid wind and muffled white, and three pairs of eyes lifted toward the sky that night, expectant and watchful.

The next day, leaves began to reappear on the birch trees. Wes plucked one with bare fingers – he'd long since relinquished his gloves to Wendy – and brought it before Mrs. Wickerbottom.

"It took them long enough," she said, inspecting it with pursed lips. "Well, off we go, then. All of us."

===

So the next day, off they went – all of them.

Wendy ventured south, with the fishing pole and her sister, to see whether the ponds had thawed. Mrs. Wickerbottom combed the plains for newly-sprouted grass.

And Wes turned east, past the rock field with its long-legged and ill-tempered birds. It was a grueling hike – a full day's trip in summer – but at the end of it was a pretty little meadow stuffed with berry bushes and carrots, and if the birches had returned, perhaps these had, as well.

Mrs. Wickerbottom had fixed him with a piercing stare when Wes first suggested it with a finger pointed east, a hopeful smile, and a gesture at himself.

"It's very far," she said at last, tone disapproving.

And Wes had indicated the ice box, where their jerky supply had dwindled to a few sad scraps. He'd lifted his eyebrows, as if to say: is there a choice?

And Mrs. Wickerbottom had sighed a weary sigh. "Don't be foolish and attempt to make it back tonight," she told him. "You'll freeze."

Wes had nodded, appropriately contrite. She'd packed a bag for him, with the wood for his fire, the fuel to keep it high and bright, and two of their remaining pieces of jerky. He gave one of the jerky strips back – offered her a smile and a bright wave – and set out before she had the chance to argue.

She would have done better, Wes reflected much later, to forbid foolishness in all its forms.

Perhaps that would have stopped him from attempting a shortcut between the nests of two of those cursed birds. He had done it before; there was a place where the boulders clustered in an ungainly line, pressed tight together, through which someone careful and quiet could slip. Going around one way or the other added hours to the journey, for you had to skirt the boulders and then the adjoining fissure leading down into the sea.

Wes did not relish the thought of the extra hours out in the cold – did not relish the exhausting travel, prudent but unnecessary. He had been as quiet as he knew how, crept between the massive rocks as he had so many times before. And then his foot had found a patch of ice and shot out from under him. He'd gone down in an ungainly pile, striking his head. And when he'd regained his feet, two of the massive creatures were looking his way, cruel beaks parted.

Wes had run.

And now, here he was at the meadow  – late and bleeding and half frozen, not a single berry to his name.

Foolish, he told himself again, and probed a gash on his forearm: a present left by one of the birds, in payment for poor decisions. Wes grimaced. There were scraps of rabbit skin in camp that might serve as a bandage, but here he had nothing. It would have to wait for the attention it needed.

Above him, the sky had grown dark with the onset of night, and there on the horizon he could make out the black shapes of thick, foreboding clouds. With a thread of anxiety, he wondered if perhaps they had been too hasty to assume the return of spring. The snow might not be done with them yet.

He set his camp near a duo of straggling birches – bent to coax the fire to life with fingers that were nearly numb. When the first flickers of flame bloomed, he fed them carefully, protectively, and as soon as they grew high enough, he shoved his hands toward the offered warmth.

Night came, chill and unforgiving, and the wind whipped in off the boulder field like a line of knives cutting into his skin.

Wes urged the fire higher and huddled as close as he dared, tucking arms and legs in to preserve warmth. When he'd finally stopped shivering, and the stone tucked against his skin began to give off heat again, he fished the strip of jerky from his bag.

It was tough; he had to worry the meat with his teeth for a long time before it gave way, and once it was in his mouth, he left it longer still, sucking at the salty strands of it. It was not a lot of food. The longer he spent in eating it, the less time he would spend wishing he had more.

Across the boulder field, he could just make out a faint glow – the campfire where Wendy and Mrs. Wickerbottom would be gathered, safe behind walls of wood. The sight brought a smile to his lips, despite the cold. However unbearable this world might be, they made it worth waking each morning to see what yet lay in store.

The night crept on. The shadows grew longer, unsettling motion at the corners of his vision. In the darkness, eyes watched him tend his small fire, to keep it from going out.

And then came the noise.

No, not a noise. A noise was something for the ears alone. This was a full-body experience, a colossal impact that filled his awareness and shook the ground. Wes was on his feet in an instant, backpack in hand, waiting. The sound came again, nearer this time.

He had heard something like it once, he thought.

It was buried in the scraps of memory from the before-times, something to match this world-shaking cacophony. A distant image: wooden chests crumbling like dry kindling beneath powerful limbs. A half-buried recollection: the freezing wind sweeping in after, through the gaps in what had once been walls, to steal the life from him.

Wes pressed near the birches, trying to make himself small in their shadows.

And then he saw it: a great, shaggy beast, taller than the trees. Its horns were like branches struck by lightning, stark and bare and sharp; its hooves meeting the ground was enough to shake the world.

Wes watched it, eyes huge, heart pounding in his throat. _Do not see me_ , he willed it, desperate.   _Mon Dieu, do not let it see me._

He crouched between the trunks of the birches, and his fingers shook as he bound twigs together, a quick twist and pull that had become second nature. The torch was a crude thing, but if he needed to run, he would be able to – flee blind into the darkness with all its horrors.

But the immense creature passed him, and with each footfall the ground shook less as it began to recede. It was moving away from him, into the boulder field. It had not seen his small fire, or perhaps had not seen him hidden there between the birches.

It was on its way west.

 _West_ , his brain clamored, in sudden alarm.

It had not seen him, no. But there in the distance, the glow from a much larger fire was still visible against the sky, the outline of the wooden wall hard and vivid among the natural shapes. Panic rolled over him in a smothering, icy wave. An invisible hand closed around his heart and squeezed.

Perhaps it was benign, some babbling voice inside him suggested, attempting to battle down the terrified certainty. Perhaps it would not care for the larger fire any more than it had his own.

But Wes did not believe that – not for an instant. He could not clear his mind of the thought of Wendy and Mrs. Wickerbottom, stretched around the fire on the fur roll, wrapped in rabbit skins. Could not shake the image of Wendy coming awake as those massive hooves began to shake the ground.

He shoved the torch into the remnants of his campfire and it burst into flame. He recalled Mrs. Wickerbottom's voice, mildly reproving: "Don't be foolish and attempt to make it back tonight."

For a brief, blinding instant, he was grateful he had no voice. He thought that otherwise, he might have laughed until it gave out, for he felt near the edges of hysteria.

Then he was moving, not giving himself a chance to second-guess. The darkness was complete, the circle of light cast by the torch barely enough to illuminate the ground in front of him. He nearly fell over the sleeping form of one of the birds, curled on its nest, and scarcely paused to spare it a glance.

He could hear the larger creature in the distance – the rolling crash of its footfalls, and then a bellow that split the air and rolled through his head like the thunder of a thousand storms.

It was slow, and that would help. It was slow, and perhaps the boulders would force it to take a longer route, for it could not fit through the path that Wes preferred. In the darkness, he found his shortcut – slipped through and stepped over the icy patch that had knocked him sprawling before.

Then the creature was behind him, and Wes did not waste to time to see whether it had become tangled in the maze of boulders. He ran. He ran until the muscles in his legs burned and his chest felt like it was on fire. The wind cut hard and deep, and he could not feel his fingers. He looked down, again and again, to ensure by sight that they still held tight to the torch.

He remembered a lecture on frostbite as though it was a distant dream, and he tucked his chin, and he kept going.

He burst into camp with perhaps a five minute lead, shaking all over, torch nearly burned out. Mrs. Wickerbottom was bent over her manuscript – the new one, on the properties of the feathers of winter birds – and she glanced up when he came in. Her eyes widened; her mouth fell open. "What on earth –"

Wes was by her side in an instant, pulling at her arm, pointing frantically into the darkness.

"The hounds?" she asked, and he shook his head, knelt by Wendy and shoved at her shoulder until she came groggily awake.

She was just a child, a bare slip of a girl, though the moment when she woke was the only time she let herself look it, face soft and unguarded. "What…?" she asked, groggy and thick with sleep, and Wes turned from her, sloughed off the backpack and began to stuff in whatever supplies he could put hands on.

Wood for a fire, the extra pairs of earmuffs, leaf-packets of healing salve.

Abigail was watching him, wide eyes pale and unreadable; the dead girl drifted higher, and higher still, so that she could peer out above the walls. She stayed there, looking into the darkness, and Wes wondered whether she could see it approaching.

Mrs. Wickerbottom began to move, seeming to catch his urgency. Into a second pack she shoved the remaining jerky and a handful of fresh fish, newly-harvested grass and a pile of twigs.

Wes was wrapping together a new torch when they felt it: that deep, bone-shuddering crash.

"That sounded big," Wendy whispered. Wes nodded, frantic, and the impact came again, nearer now, louder.

He lit the new torch from the fire pit, and now Wendy was moving, too, scooping up an axe and the rabbit skin blanket.

The next footfall shook the ground beneath them, and Wes began to drag Wendy toward the entryway. He shoved the torch into her hand, turned to take Mrs. Wickerbottom by the arm, and she was – not there. Was bent over the chest, salvaging her manuscripts.

He flapped his hands at Wendy – go – and she slipped out into the night, her sister in tow, as Wes circled back around. His free hand seized the partially finished treatise, and the other took Mrs. Wickerbottom's hand, and he hauled her toward the entryway with all his strength.

He was not fast enough.

For the creature had come, with its massive horns and its single, awful eye. It stood head and shoulders above their wall, looking in, and it opened its mouth and bellowed again.

Reality seemed to dissolve a little around the edges. Later, the events would come in jagged bits and pieces, as though they were the grainy, jerky footage in a film reel.

Now the creature was crashing through their walls as though it were a selfish child breaking a toy it no longer wanted, and Mrs. Wickerbottom, voice awed and afraid, was saying: "Laurasiatheria!"

Now he collided with the far wall and pain exploded, and Mrs. Wickerbottom went down badly, with one leg twisted beneath her.

Now a terrible certainty descended: they would die here, and Wes would begin again and wake to Maxwell's grinning face, and he would never find either of them, and that is how he would spend his days until the end of time.

Now a splintering noise rent the air as their drying racks came apart under a hooved foot, and he was hauling Mrs. Wickerbottom to her feet, getting one arm over his shoulders and taking half her weight. He led her, staggering, toward a flattened section of wall. Then they were down again, and there was blood, and he could not recall how it had happened.

Now Abigail appeared, her small, glowing form so tiny before the giant's bulk. They were moving again, somehow, disjointed and listing, but Wes did not know when they had managed to stand.  He was gasping in great, silent, sobbing breaths, and there in the black of the night, Wendy was waiting with the torch.

Now darkness. Pain. Cold. Vague impressions – nothing more.

Then fire: Wendy's small hands urging one to life. Spreading the rabbit skin blanket for Mrs. Wickerbottom, and her awake despite the pain. A leg, twisted and bent, with a new joint formed mid-calf.

Sheltering the light of the fire with bushes and shrubbery, lest they be seen. Staring into the darkness, waiting for Abigail to follow, realizing that she would not.

Waiting for the night to end, the endless night.

And in the hours nearest dawn, small flakes of snow drifting down from a black sky.


End file.
